News, Commentary and humor from a Blue Collar, Working Class perspective on media and the world

STOP THE FASCISM, I WANT TO GET OFF

According to the New York Times, the NYPD will have more than 100 surveillance cameras monitoring cars in Lower Manhattan by the end of this year. I’m sad at seeing fear overtake reason in what is supposed to be a free country.

You may be aware that Great Britain is the country with the most security cameras on Earth. London has a so-called Ring of Steel, a web of cameras and roadblocks “designed to detect, track and deter terrorists.”

New York emulating London’s web of cameras is a good thing, you say? It’ll help prevent terror attacks, you say. Oh, really?

From the NYT:

“British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track
suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb
plots last month.”

In other words, the thousands of cameras in London did exactly Jack Shit to prevent psychos from killing innocent people. Do you honestly imagine that anyone extreme enough to engage in a suicide bombing is going to think, “I’m willing to die for [insert irrational cause here] but not if I’m on camera“?

Let me ask you a question. If you think that government-operated cameras exist to protect the public and are a great thing, would you have wanted to live in the former Soviet Union or East Germany which employed many of them?

“No,” you say, “those cameras were installed by governments that were afraid of their own citizens and which used the threat of terrorists/subversives/whatever to keep the public docile and in line.”